Thy Kingdom Come
The Last Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 29B
November 24, 2024
2 Samuel 23:1-7; Revelation 1:4b-8; John 18:33-37
Ninety-nine years ago, Pope Pius XI had had enough. On December 11, 1925, the Bishop of Rome issued the second encyclical (or church-wide letter) of his papacy. This encyclical took its name from its opening words, “Quas primas” or “In the first.” Those words were a reference to his first encyclical, which the pope had issued three years earlier as a way of urging the modern, increasingly secular world to return to its Christian roots. He was not impressed with the response. So he wrote a second letter, which began with a bit of finger-wagging at those who had ignored what he had written the first time:
In the first Encyclical Letter which We addressed at the beginning of Our Pontificate…We referred to the chief causes of the difficulties under which mankind was laboring. And We remember saying that these manifold evils in the world were due to the fact that the majority of men had thrust Jesus Christ and his holy law out of their lives; that these had no place either in private affairs or in politics: and we said further, that as long as individuals and states refused to submit to the rule of our Savior, there would be no really hopeful prospect of a lasting peace among nations. [1]
Between 1922 and 1925, things had not gotten better. Benito Mussolini, whose Fascist Party had come to power after his March on Rome in October 1922, had consolidated his control over the nation and begun to rule as a dictator in January 1925. Adolf Hitler, whose failed coup in 1923 had landed him in prison, was released in the spring of 1924, and his personal manifesto, Mein Kampf, was published a year later. As a sign that their movement wasn’t going away, in November 1925, on the second anniversary of the Nazis’ failed attempt to take over Bavaria, Hitler’s personal bodyguard, the SS, was founded.
Lest we think that nationalistic tendencies were only manifest in Europe back then, over 30,000 people dressed in white hoods and robes marched on Washington, DC, in August 1925, as the KKK’s popularity continued to grow. And, in October of that year, the land that would become Mount Rushmore was set apart for the national monument—land that was illegally taken from the Sioux Nation—and the same sculptor who had created the “Shrine to the Confederacy” on Stone Mountain in Georgia was hired to oversee the massive project.
Pope Pius XI was tired of telling people that Jesus was the world’s true hope only to watch them choose leaders whose platforms and policies were antithetical to the reign of God. He believed that God’s vision for the world was something different and that the solution was not a further separation of church and state but a thorough enmeshing of the two. He was convinced, perhaps naively, that that remarriage would result in the re-subjection of human authority to the rule of God. As he wrote, “Once men recognize, both in private and in public life, that Christ is King, society will at last receive the great blessings of real liberty, well-ordered discipline, peace and harmony.” [2]
Words, Pius had learned, were not enough, so, in his encyclical, he instituted the feast of Christ the King, setting aside one Sunday in the church’s year to celebrate the reign of Jesus Christ. “Nations will be reminded by the annual celebration of this feast,” he wrote, “that not only private individuals but also rulers and princes are bound to give public honor and obedience to Christ.” [3]
Today is Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday after Pentecost, the last Sunday before the season of Advent and the beginning of a new liturgical year. Normally, being a bit of a traditionalist, I don’t give much attention to recent liturgical innovations like Christ the King Sunday, which only took hold in our lectionary in the 1970s. But, given our collective need to remember who is really in charge, I’m starting to think that it might be a good idea.
“Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come.” That is how John the Divine, the author of the Book of Revelation, greets those who read his letter. If there’s any book in the Bible that we need to read and study right now, it’s Revelation. This book is God’s good news for a church that was beginning to forget how to believe in the authority of God and of God’s Son, Jesus Christ.
It had been around seventy-five years since Jesus’ death and resurrection, and things had not gotten better during that time. Persecution was a way of life. One Roman Emperor succeeded another, and any moment of relief was quickly followed by another round of harsh suffering. The fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple in 70AD left the early church wondering whether the end had come, but, instead of Jesus’ promised return, all that his followers received was another quarter-century of hardship. Revelation was God’ vision for a new world, and it was given to John the Divine in the church’s darkest hour because that was precisely the moment when Christians needed to remember that God is still God no matter what happens.
The Book of Revelation is a story about the transformation of the world from a place ruled by emperors and kings into the kingdom of God. These days, readers of Revelation often get distracted by the strange images and symbols contained in the text, but those were God’s way of helping Christians believe that everything they had ever known about the way the world worked would not always last. It helped them believe that the suffering and hardship they endured were signs that God’s reign was taking hold and that the forces of evil, which had already been dealt a deathblow by Jesus’ death and resurrection, were merely thrashing about in one last age of terrible but futile power. In other words, the real hope contained in Revelation is the realization that, no matter what happens in the world around us, God is already in charge.
“‘I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come.” For most of my life, I heard those words—Alpha and Omega—as a statement about the beginning and the end. God was God in the beginning, and God will be God in the end. That’s good news. But our proclamation is far more radical than that. The vision God gave to John the Divine is not one of a God whose reign is manifest in the story of creation and then again at the end of time. Our God reigns in every moment of cosmic history—from Alpha to Omega—from the beginning until the end and through every moment in between—the one “who is and who was and who is to come.”
Remembering that in a world in which suffering and hardship seem to be in charge is an act of faith. Believing that in an age when the victory of God appears to be overshadowed by the triumphs of ungodly human endeavors takes hard work. But, if we don’t, we’ll never learn to recognize how Christ is coming among us as our savior.
As Christians, we believe that Jesus will come again and make all things new. But most Christians seem to expect that to happen in a way that makes the cross an unfortunate accident of history instead of the source of salvation that it truly is. To put it simply, when Jesus finally reigns as the King of Kings, do we expect him to wear a crown of jewels or as crown of thorns?
Do we believe that Jesus will return in a show of military might in order to give earthly power and authority to his followers, or do we believe that the power of God is manifest chiefly through the suffering and sacrifice we see embodied by Jesus on the cross? If it’s the former, we’re in big trouble because that means the kingship of Christ is only manifest in moments of worldly success. It means that Jesus’ triumph over evil is not accomplished in the cross and empty tomb but remains unfinished until God decides that it’s time for God to retake the throne that God has lost. But, if we believe that the King of Kings was always supposed to wear a crown of thorns, our hope lies not in a wishful dream but in the one whose suffering, death, and resurrection have already opened for us the way of eternal life.
The reign of God does not come into focus through the lenses of earthly kingdoms but only through the way of Jesus Christ. As Jesus said to Pilate, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over.” Jesus teaches us that there is no expression of violence or earthly might that can bring the reign of God any closer to us. In the same way, his death and resurrection show us that there is no manifestation of earthly power—no king or president or political movement—that can push the reign of God any further away from us.
Pius XI hoped for a world in which the reign of Christ was manifest in and through all the nations of the world. As long as we’re standing around waiting for the right people to get elected so that God’s will can take over our palaces and state houses, that hope will be nothing more than a pipe dream. But, if we’re willing to look for it and nurture it in the hearts and minds and lives of Jesus’ followers, we’ll see that Christ’s reign is already here.
© 2024 Evan D. Garner
